Bad Wisdom
by incandescens
Summary: This is a story about Yaone. And Nii-hakase. (Though not in the same bed.) And other people. And it's dark. Now complete.
1. Distillation

Chapter One   
  
Yaone hummed idly to herself, watching translucent fluid coil itself slowly down the spiral of glass tubing and drip into the phial at the bottom. There was always a certain pleasure when it came to exercising personal skill -- no, in some ways it was art rather than skill -- and especially in a good cause. The theory was sound, and it was a pleasure to see that the practice was effective.   
  
She waited for the last drop to fall, and stoppered the phial of pure nicotine. It was such a small thing in her hand, no larger than the grenades which she liked to use, and quite as lethal.  
  
Of course, the best thing was that nobody would ever expect her to do anything so _dishonourable_. But she was learning. It was just another step.   
  
First she had learned that it was permissible to kill dishonourably, if it was in her master's service. Mix poison with their food. Kill innocents if necessary to make sure you dispose of your targets. Just get the job done.  
  
Then she'd learned that living to serve was more important than dying with honour.  
  
She liked to think that she was a good learner.  
  
And now, after that hideous day when she'd lost both of them, both Lirin and Kougaiji-sama, she'd learned that sometimes a loyal servant had to take action before being commanded to do so. Without being commanded to do so. The blow across Dokugakuji's face had been as much at herself as at him. One little action earlier, one tiny bit of bloodshed, one blow at the people who she _knew_ were dangers to her lord -- to all of them -- and it would have been different. All of it would have been different.  
  
The glass phial in her hand had warmed itself to her body heat by now. With a bit of imagination, she could conceive it to be a living thing. _I am a mother who births poisons . . ._  
  
There was a whisper of air and sound behind her, scented with fire and copper. She stiffened, caught herself, and carefully set down the phial before turning around. As she had expected, Kougaiji-sama was standing there.  
  
"Yaone," he said.  
  
"Kougaiji-sama," she replied. His eyes were frozen, a hundred miles deep in madness, and no longer recognised her in the way that they had once done. She wondered who they saw. _His servant? His slave? His apothecary?_  
  
He glanced at the small container that she had just put down. "Who for?"  
  
"Who would you like me to poison, Kougaiji-sama?" There was a time that she would never have asked him that, because he would never have set her the question in the first place. Everything changed. Another lesson.  
  
He didn't quite smile, but she could sense his approval of the answer. She bowed her head so that she would not have to meet those dreadful eyes.  
  
"Maybe later," he said, ambiguously.  
  
She nodded, head still lowered.  
  
He left the room silently, slippered feet soft against the tiled floor. She knew that he walked the corridors at night, that he always came to the statue of his mother, and that he stood there looking at it with his face deadly blank and empty, the fierce sorrow which had been there before all gone, drained away to leave space for this new Kougaiji-sama, the true son of Gyumaoh.   
  
The battered, half-full packet of cigarettes was hidden among her stocks of acids, where nobody would be foolish enough to pry.  
  
_Put that down now, Lirin! It's dangerous!_  
  
She didn't use all the cigarettes. That was unnecessary. Just a few from the pack, carefully injected with some of the nicotine and left to dry, then slid back in with the others again. The dose made the poison, turning them from minor insults to the body into little fragments of death that would go from lungs to brain. Nicotine was three times as poisonous as arsenic, twice as poisonous as strychnine.  
  
It should be enough to kill Nii Jieni.  
  
She hadn't told Dokugakuji. What good would it do to tell him? He'd . . . disapprove. He wouldn't necessarily say so out loud, but she knew that she'd see it in his eyes, and she was selfish enough to want him still to think of her as the little sister who he could trust and shelter. _Not that he can._ The nice girl. Nice girls don't poison other people. _Except if Kougaiji-sama says to._ The loyal servant. Loyal servants don't go round killing without reason.  
  
_I've got some excellent reasons, Dokugakuji. Beautiful reasons. Reasons I take out at night and think about to warm myself. Stopping the resurrection. Saving Lirin. Helping Kougaiji-sama. Aren't those good reasons? And there's personal hate, but that's a personal reason, and we're not talking about personal reasons here._  
  
Yaone slid the last cigarette back into the pack.  
  
It was a good thing that Nii Jieni was so untidy. His workplace was a clutter of half-finished mugs of coffee, used cigarette packets, scrawled sticky notes, computer disks, and other impedimenta. Howan-hakase avoided looking at it. She'd seen the female scientist deliberately swivel her chair round so that she could get her back towards the mess, and avoid looking at anything associated with Nii. And Nii had . . .  
  
Yaone frowned. Nii had turned and looked at her, and his mouth had curled in that private smile of his. She'd forgotten that till now. He hadn't said anything. He'd looked at her, and she'd wrenched her eyes away and finished her errand and walked out of the room, boots tapping on the tiles, mouth pressed shut in furious disgust.  
  
Of course, one of these might not kill him immediately. There were doubts in the castle as to whether he was quite human in any respect.  
  
She'd just have to make sure that she was in the vicinity, to tidy up any little loose ends that might remain.  
  
---

Fanfic Page 


	2. Isolation

Chapter Two   
  
The atmosphere around the laboratories was heavy with sound.   
  
The pulse of the air conditioning and the whirring of the computers and the other equipment -- all those things she couldn't name, complex coils of machinery and circuitry far from the simpler practice of her skills -- hummed at the back of her head, beating in a rhythm that was only noticeable if concentrated upon. Otherwise it went unheard, dismissed as background noise, as much part of the surroundings as the whisper of her long tails of hair.   
  
"I could take a turn," Doku said, sitting down next to her with a thump. The thin-legged laboratory chair gave slightly as he settled onto it, plastic creaking and straining. "You don't have to play liaison here all the time."   
  
Yaone shrugged. "It gives me something to do." _I used to look after Lirin. You used to look after Kou. We're hardly busy now._   
  
"You've got your hair up," he observed.   
  
She turned and looked at him more carefully than she had before. "And?"   
  
"So are you expecting a fight?" He raised one hand defensively. "No, it's okay. Don't worry. This whole place feels as if it's about to snap. No wonder . . ." He trailed off. One hand drifted down to fiddle with the skirts of his coat, vivid against the white silk.   
  
Yaone observed him closely for the first time in several days. The markings on his face stood out more prominently than before. Shadows were smeared under his eyes like kohl. "Your skin is like parchment," she said, and wondered at her own words. "When did you last sleep?"   
  
"When did _you_ last sleep?"   
  
She shrugged again, and repressed the urge to twitch nervously. That shouldn't come for a while yet. She knew how to dose herself to stay awake. She couldn't afford to sleep yet. "A couple of nights ago," she lied. "Last night -- was . . . well. You know. No wonder."   
  
"No wonder," he repeated flatly. The corridor to either side was empty. "Have you seen Kou today?"   
  
"Not for a couple of days."   
  
"What are we going to do if he takes us out into the field to -- you know." Doku didn't meet her eyes.   
  
_I'm counting the minutes till it happens. Hadn't you even thought about that?_ "We cope," she said flatly. "We follow orders. We get the sutra."   
  
"That simple?"   
  
Yaone lowered her voice. "Has it occurred to you that if Kougaiji-sama's mother is restored, she is one of the few people round here who might be able to deal with certain current problems?"   
  
Doku blinked, and looked at her properly, seeing her for the first time. "But Gyokumen took her down before," he said, in a voice which begged, _convince me otherwise, persuade me, tell me we have a chance._   
  
"Gyokumen must have caught her by surprise," Yaone said softly. "Rasetsu was the Empress. She couldn't have been a weakling. And Kougaiji-sama was -- is -- her son."   
  
"And what about the Emperor?"   
  
Yaone set her teeth. "What _about_ the Emperor? He's not our problem. Perhaps Heaven will send the Toushin Taishi down to deal with him again. Perhaps Kougaiji-sama himself will do something about his father, once he's been restored. Kougaiji-sama is our concern. Isn't he?"   
  
Doku reached over and squeezed her shoulder, but she could tell that she hadn't managed to convince him. "Of course."   
  
"We have to try." Her words were for herself rather than Dokugakuji. Poison, murder, treachery, anything, all of it. "We must have faith."   
  
His hand was warm and large on her shoulder, and once again she found herself reminded of the difference in height and size between the two of them. He for physical strength, Kougaiji-sama for spiritual power -- either of them could break her like a stalk of grass if ever they wanted to. _I the apothecary, I the servant, I the scholar -- I the mouse._ "You don't know what he means to me," she said, barely audible.   
  
"You have no _idea_ what he means to me." There was an unexpected note of anger to Doku's voice. She looked up at him again, feeling his hand tighten on her shoulder, grinding flesh against bone.   
  
Anger coiled in her belly. "Just because I'm not . . ."   
  
"Not what?"   
  
There was a crash from inside the laboratory.   
  
They both turned to stare at the closed door.   
  
Doku was the first across the corridor, half a step ahead of Yaone.   
  
The laboratory door was unlocked. The room stank of cigarettes, filthy with the smell rather than simply pungent, with an undertone of mould and old paper. The two other researchers were absent. Nii Jieni was obvious, a sprawled unconscious mass on the floor, lanky arms outthrown and dirty white coat fallen behind him like wings, a lit cigarette smouldering itself away beside him. A shattered computer monitor on the floor by his hand explained the noise.   
  
"I don't believe it," Doku said, eyes slowly widening in shock and delight. "I don't fucking believe it!"   
  
Yaone was faster. She had to make sure that Doku couldn't possibly be blamed for this, as the Empress would certainly be wanting someone's head -- and other vital organs -- on a pole. They had each other for alibi outside the door, but now she needed to keep him away from the scientist. _Until I'm sure that he's dead._ She dropped to her knees next to the man, and touched his neck lightly, checking his pulse.   
  
_Alive. Damn._ "He's alive," she said, and bit down on her feelings. "You'd better fetch Howan-hakase."   
  
Doku stood there, looking down at her, and she could read the thoughts in his eyes, the temptation, the _possibility_, everything that she herself had already weighed out in her mind. Then he nodded, and left at a quick run.   
  
_And does he know what I'm about to do? Or is it just something that he could never do himself, and which he wouldn't believe that I could consider?_   
  
She flipped out a tiny pill from one of the phials at her waist, and brought it to Nii Jieni's lips.   
  
_Here's something to fill your mouth_, she thought.   
  
He caught her wrist, hot nicotine-stained fingers wrapping round her gloved wrist faster than she would have thought possible for a human, and his eyes flicked open behind his dirty glasses. "Too obvious," he said, in that moment when she was stunned and frozen in shock. "And you were doing so well up till then, too."   
  
She wouldn't let herself think about the implications of that, not yet, not for the moment. "Shut up and take your medicine," she hissed, free hand going round his throat to hold him in place.   
  
"Anh . . ." His other hand pried at her fingers, trying to loosen her grip, just strong enough to stop her strangling him properly. "Maa . . . didn't think you cared," he whispered, barely audible above the low hum of the computers.   
  
"Always."   
  
"Improving?" Their position, their struggle, didn't touch his face at all. He still smiled that unholy, _knowing_ smile. "You want your prince back, don't you?"  
  
"Don't try to manipulate me." The pill moved closer to his lips.   
  
"You know what you want. Good first step. Better than him."   
  
For a moment, his eyes flicked to the glass tube that stood in pride of place on one wall, and her own eyes followed the movement. That was where he'd kept Kougaiji-sama, twisted him, warped him . . . her fingers tightened on his throat.   
  
"There's a way to get him back."   
  
She could feel his pulse. In a moment she wouldn't need to ever feel his pulse again.   
  
"What would your Kougaiji-sama think of what you're doing?"   
  
"He's not _my_ Kougaiji-sama." She leaned forward, and her hair fell in vivid streaks across his white shirt and coat. "I am doing this because I want. It. Done."   
  
He was stronger than she'd expected. She just needed a few seconds longer.   
  
His breath smelled of cigarettes and coffee.   
  
The sound of the machines was dying away, leaving the two of them in a bubble of silence.   
  
"Your Kougaiji-sama doesn't care about Rasetsu any more." Nii Jieni pushed her fingers back a fraction of an inch. "He won't free her."   
  
_And then nothing will change, and even if we get the sutra, Gyumaoh will return, and he will never be our Kougaiji-sama again, and . . . _   
  
"No," she hissed, but she could hear the weakness in her own voice.   
  
"I'll play a game with you," Nii whispered. "In just a minute. I'll let go and we'll see if you kill me."   
  
She lifted her eyebrows, watching him, not letting go, not relaxing the tension of her muscles.   
  
"You know why I work for the Empress, mm? Because. Just because. Because she knows what she wants and I enjoy giving people what they want. I asked the prince what he wanted, mm? Sa Jien remembers that. You should ask him about it. Your prince didn't know. Pity, that? But you know. Don't you?"   
  
It was like a scream inside her. _He gave me mercy when I failed, grace when I despaired, protection when I would have died. And there is nothing that I can do now to bring him back, nothing except kill the person who did it to him . . ._   
  
"You want it, mm? I can give you tools. And we'll see what happens."   
  
There was nothing but truth in his eyes and voice and face. A truth that would enjoy seeing her break and fall, and all the more because he had given her the chance.   
  
_I would damn myself for a thousand years to save him._   
  
He let go.   
  
There were running feet in the distance.   
  
There was still time to force the pill down his lying throat, to hold him still as he choked and convulsed and spat out bloody foam and died.   
  
There was time to do anything at all.   
  
There was time to remember that Kougaiji-sama had trusted her to serve him loyally and wisely, that he had told her to live, and that he had let her walk into danger and known that she would not hesitate to do whatever was necessary.   
  
_. . . for a thousand years . . ._   
  
Yaone sat back on her knees, and took her hands away from Nii Jieni, and slipped the pill away in its customary place.   
  
Doku and Howan-hakase and a gaggle of servants came in, running around and yattering and waving hands in the air, listening to Nii's lying excuse that he had fallen and struck his head. He smiled at Howan-hakase, and she looked away with tightened lips.   
  
Yaone met Doku's eyes, but this time they were dark and unreadable, and she didn't know whether he was thinking, _I knew you wouldn't kill him_ or _How could you let him live?_   
  
--- 

Fanfic Page 


	3. Fusion

Chapter Three   
  
Yaone's bedroom was like all the other bedrooms she had ever had; when she needed comfort, there were only her own traces left from which to take it. Her texts, her herbs, her alembics and her clothing, all her own. When she lived in her family's house, her mother had let her choose her own decorations and silks, her own tapestries, and had gone down with her to the town so that the child Yaone could select a weaving of her own choosing. Her bedroom had always been her own territory. It wasn't till later that she had realised there was nothing from anyone else in there that she could hold onto.  
  
She had had a whole night to know what was going to happen in the morning. _Hyakugan Maoh._ She had curled up in the wreckage of her bed, sheets torn, clothing scattered in a rage of helplessness, and looked around her room in the dying candlelight. That was the whole of her life on the shelves, from the first dried rose-petal to the last distillation of vitriol, and nothing she could do could possibly save her.  
  
After all. It wasn't as if. She was. The sort. Of. Girl. Who. Ran. Away.  
  
_It was always your own choice. See? See?_  
  
Yaone closed her eyes, then opened them again calmly. Her hands had stopped shaking by now. She had made her bed and must lie in it. She had deliberately chosen to commit an act of sheer insanity in trusting Nii Jieni. The thought nearly made her laugh, but it would have been too close to hysteria for comfort. Now, this was familiar, this was usual; one did not panic until the operation was safely over, one did not let the hands or voice or eye tremble till the matter was done. She had been precise enough in the performance.   
  
Time went by so slowly.  
  
"Our lady of the various sorrows." Nii Jieni was standing there by the door, as though her sense of time had dislocated and skipped a marking on the clock, inside the room, almost within reach of where she sat at her desk. The back of her neck crawled with his nearness. "Jingle. Jingle jangle." He flapped his bunny's ears at her limply. The doll hung in his arm, eternal smile facing downwards towards the floor.  
  
"We had a deal," she said, her voice perfectly calm. "Should I be considering breaking it?"  
  
"Oh no." He laughed, a quick jerking amused sound. ""No, no. Mustn't back out at this point. People would call me a tease. Here." The hand that was toying with the bunny's ears tossed a pellet onto the desk. "Take it. This evening. Call it an earnest of good faith. Mm?"  
  
Yaone didn't touch it. "What is it?"  
  
"Oh. A change of perspective." He smiled at her. She could smell sweat and dirt and stale coffee. "Your heart's desire. Try it and see."  
  
Time -- skipped again. His smell still dirtied her room, but he was gone.   
  
Logic said she would be a fool to take his word for anything, a fool to swallow this pellet. Logic said she had been a fool to let him live. Logic was doubtless right.  
  
Yaone watched her hands, watched the pellet that lay on the smooth dark wood of the desk next to them. Without her gloves, her hands were small, frail things; painted nails a vanity, thin fingers a fragility, delicate bones something that she occasionally found beautiful.  
  
She remembered Dokugakuji talking about gambling. He'd been describing the fever that makes a losing gambler keep on throwing money into the game, in a desperate attempt to win something back, to salvage something from his losses.  
  
The future fanned itself out in front of her in a hundred glittering choices. Spare Nii. Kill Nii. Talk to Dokugakuji. Talk to Kougaiji-sama. Kill Nii. Walk away from here, close the door, turn out the lights, leave this life behind her and with it everything she had ever thought of as honour. Walk into the laboratories and smash everything until someone brought her down and stopped her.  
  
She watched, with the slow calm of exhaustion, as her hands picked up the pellet, and turned it between her fingers. It smelt of hair and metal and blood.  
  
Wearily, Yaone walked across to her bed, and sat down on the edge of it, disarranging the neatly folded covers. She swallowed the pellet, and in turn sleep swallowed her in a great tide of darkness.  
  
---  
  
_This is not-time. This is dream. The body is heavier. The hands are larger, and marked with scars. Trousers and robe hang differently on the body. The vision is not as keen.  
  
The body rises. Walks. Yaone moves with it, trapped inside this frame of flesh and bone, a ghost looking out through someone else's eyes. She feels the brush of silk against skin, the knotting of the hands into fists, the cramping of the shoulder muscles. The body is heavy with misery.  
  
Corridors pass.  
  
It is night. Torches burn on the walls, circles of light between the stretches of shadow.  
  
A door. Yaone knows the door. The large-knuckled hand (don't you know yet?) reaches to open it, pulls it open. The body walks into the room beyond. The woman is still encased in stone, eyes blankly fixed and empty, hands crossed on her breast. The ofuda strung around her flutter in the draught from the door. Kougaiji-sama stands beneath the statue, looking up at her face as though he expects to find something in it.  
  
(your Kougaiji-sama)  
  
Kougaiji-sama turns at the disturbance, meets the body's eyes. And   
  
(this is not how it feels for me, Yaone says somewhere inside, in a tiny voice, as the body tightens in response and need)  
  
says, voice empty, without even the hatred or contempt necessary for ice and cold and heart-killing bitterness, "Dokugakuji?"  
  
(you knew who it was)  
  
"Yes, my prince," the body says, and goes down in the full formal salute, head bowed.  
  
"Why?" No effort wasted here. No real curiosity. No concern. No connection. Nothing.  
  
(He's not my Kougaiji-sama)  
  
The body's eyes watch the floor in misery. The body's voice says, "To serve you, my Prince." The body wants. The body wants so badly. The body is torn with the soul's misery, and together they push over all sorts of edges.  
  
"Ah." Footsteps. "Down."  
  
The body knew this would happen. The body is as prepared as it can be.  
  
(but the mind can't go away)  
  
The body is used. The body closes its eyes. The body feels the needle-fine points of nails cutting through the silk of the robe and piercing the shoulders. The body submits and opens and needs and wants and has to have and will take whatever it can get and the body's mouth moves as the body is taken and   
  
(and all she can feel is the body's reflexes, nothing of Dokugakuji, and perhaps he knows nothing of her, but isn't this what you wanted, Yaone-san, didn't you want to be his, isn't this your heart's desire, don't you want your Kougaiji-sama, don't you want him, don't you want?)  
  
shakes in orgasm   
  
(don't you?)  
  
and will go into the fire  
  
(don't)  
  
for the Red Boy  
  
(body, soul, two sides of a coin, both given up)  
  
and Kougaiji-sama finishes, and says, "You may go." And that is all there is to it._  
  
---  
  
And Yaone woke up.  
  
And she got out of bed and dressed herself, and when she looked in the mirror there was nothing behind her eyes, nothing at all, and she took her spear, and she walked through the corridors of the castle until she came to the laboratories, and she walked in, and she threw Howan-hakase against the wall to stop her babbling, and she put her spear through Nii Jieni's chest, and she held him there as he choked on his own blood, and it ran out of his mouth and stained her shoes.  
  
---  
  
And Yaone woke up.  
  
And she got out of bed and dressed herself, but she would not look at her own face in the mirror, and she took her spear, and she walked through the corridors of the castle until she came to the laboratories, and she waited there very patiently until Nii Jieni came out, and she knocked him down and beat his head in with the butt of her spear.  
  
---  
  
And Yaone woke up.  
  
And she got out of bed and dressed herself, noting as she did that her nails were broken and her fingers were bloody, and she walked through the corridors of the castle until she came to the laboratories, and she walked in, and she put her bloody hands around Nii Jieni's throat, and he laughed at her as she tightened her grip until there was no air left for him to laugh with.  
  
---  
  
And Yaone woke up.  
  
And she got out of bed and dressed herself, because one must do these things properly, and she walked through the corridors of the castle until she came to her stillroom, and she went in, and she mixed herself a draught of aconite, and she swallowed it, and there was nothing in her head except the single thought of _make it stop_.  
  
---  
  
And Yaone woke up.  
  
---

Fanfic Page 


	4. Reduction

Chapter Four   
  
Yaone's head ached the way it always did after overindulgence. It was the same feeling of the eyes being over-dry, the skin pulled tight over the forehead so that every brush of air rasped against her face and found nerves where none should exist, light too bright, noise too loud, the air too thick, and oppression hanging like a wave above her and about to break.  
  
She would have dosed herself with something, normally -- willowbark, or any of half a dozen other things -- but that _substance_ Nii had given her would still be in her body. Imagination twitched itself to supply a dozen images of reaction and counter-reaction, then twitched away again.  
  
Kougaiji was attending the Empress' morning court; therefore, she and Dokugakuji must attend as well.   
  
Gyokumen Koushu enjoyed receiving petitioners. Her lips would part as she smiled in slow glorious acknowledgement as they would prostrate themselves before her high throne. Her silks trailed in luxurious waste, thick and glossy on the obsidian floor, and her skin glowed like jade where her robe fell casually open. She would delay as she tasted every word of judgement, eyes bright as jewels in the exercise of power.  
  
_Petty_, Yaone thought, and was surprised at herself. She was used to thinking many things of Gyokumen Koushu, and none of them were kind, but pettiness was not a vice which she usually troubled to ascribe to the woman. A magnificent figure of sorts, couched in her own debaucheries, proud and delighted in her malice, but --   
  
Yaone's head spun. This exercise of power was a microcosm of what Gyokumen Koushu wanted to do the world outside. _Put her foot on it and make it squirm._ And here the woman sat, enjoying the same thing in miniature, and if this was petty, then that was petty, and all of it so small a thing compared to real power . . .  
  
A girl child knelt beside the throne, holding a bowl of grapes. From time to time Gyokumen would feed her one, offhand and casual, her long nails brushing against the girl's lips.  
  
_Petty . . ._  
  
"Who's that one over there?" Doku murmured, just loud enough to catch her attention. His eyes flicked towards where a strange youkai leaned against a pillar, slightly apart from the nearby group of courtiers. His torn coat hung from his shoulders, linked across his bare chest by thin chains, and his face was all casual condescension. "Looks new."  
  
"He is new," Yaone replied, just as quiet. Their voices were lost in the background whispering of obserers, a rippling thread of noise that only fell fully silent when the Empress chose to speak. "He must be an emissary, or in someone's service."  
  
"Think so?"  
  
"Nobody's trying to court his attention. Either he's too dangerous or he's not important enough."  
  
"Mnh."  
  
Kougaiji stood in front of them, as he should do, back turned to them, eyes on Gyokumen. He could have been jade and bronze for all the animation in his face, all the light in his eyes. Before, when he had attended court, he had been just as calm, but there had been a banked fire smouldering, a presence awake and aware behind those dark eyes. He had been silent through courtesy, or through concern for his mother, or because he had nothing to say; but at least he had been _there_ as he was not now.  
  
"Any news about Lirin?" Doku asked casually.  
  
The question startled Yaone, and she turned slightly to look at him. Something pulsed in her head, veins throbbing along her forehead, eyes aching.  
  
He shrugged. "I figured it out. That's why you're watching the labs. Sensible. You might understand what's going on there. I wouldn't. But . . ." He hesitated, and Yaone could hear the words behind his silence. _You could have told me. You should have told me. Why didn't you tell me?_  
  
"I wasn't sure," she said carefully. "I didn't want to risk . . ." The pain in his eyes cut her off. _And I'm still risking, and I'm still not telling._ "Dokugakuji, it's not that I --"  
  
"Then what is it?" he asked bluntly.  
  
Sheer desperation made her ball her hands into tight fists. "Don't be like that. You know perfectly well that you'd want to keep me out of danger. Where do you go at night?" The twitch in one cheek told her that she'd hit home. "What do you do that you aren't telling me about? What are you doing that you'd prefer to keep your "little sister" out of?"  
  
"Am I like that?" Dokugakuji asked slowly.  
  
Anger drained out of her like water. "We both are."  
  
His mouth twitched, and his face became gentle again. Normal. _Vulnerable._ "Fine pair we are."  
  
"We are."  
  
_And if you don't tell him now, you'll never tell him._  
  
"I'm trying something," she said through dry lips. "I don't know whether or not it will work. Dokugakuji, forgive me if --"  
  
He reached across to touch her shoulder, hand warm through the thin silk of her jacket. "There's nothing to forgive," he said, an odd desolate calmness in his eyes. "You try. I try. We both try. You hit me once, remember? To remind me of who I was and where I was and what needed doing. And if the time comes, then I'll do the same for you." He nodded towards Kougaiji. "We both know who we serve."  
  
Yaone nodded. "Yes. We do. I depend on you."  
  
"Everyone does." He squeezed her shoulder, then released it. "Big brother to the universe, that's me . . ."  
  
"Except his own, mm?" Nii was standing two paces to the other side of her, holding his stupid doll like a child in his arms. He tilted its head so that it stared up at her, smiling blankly. "Don't you think?"  
  
Dokugakuji made no answer. Yaone turned to look at him. He stood there in the sudden silence that washed over the room, unmoving, eyes on her but as empty as agate, as calm as a sleeper. On her throne, Gyokumen Koushu was poised like a statue, hand raised and mouth curved in a smile. The courtiers and bystanders -- even Kougaiji-sama -- were still, silent, quiet as death.  
  
_I stopped dreaming. I stopped dreaming. Didn't I?_  
  
"What are you?" she asked.  
  
Nii smiled. "I'm a ghost, you know --"  
  
"No. What _are_ you?" Her fingers tightened. So easy to pull her spear from nothingness, ram it through him like in the dream, pull herself out of this nightmare through his flesh and blood.  
  
"You'd do better to ask a relevant question, wouldn't you?" A knowing smile from him, that somehow shared a confidence, a private confession of foulness. "Something to do with what you wanted? Or have you changed your mind?"  
  
"Nothing's changed."  
  
His eyes mocked her. "Hasn't it?"  
  
"I want my Kougaiji-sama restored. That hasn't changed."  
  
"Oh? Not even after you felt him in the flesh . . ." Her face must have shown something, because he chuckled. "Mm -- so what do you think I did to him? Your own words?"  
  
"You changed him," Yaone said carefully, her lips numb with anger. The previous night had been an attempt to shake her, then, to make her doubt her purposes. She wouldn't be daunted that simply. "You made him something he isn't."  
  
"Oh no no no." Nii shook his head. "I thought you were doing better than that. I made him someone he could be. Took away all those awkward bits -- anh? You don't think so?"  
  
"No." _Gyumaoh's son. What else should he be? But Rasetsunyo's child as well._ "They're not _awkward bits_. They're part of who Kougaiji-sama is!"  
  
"Ahhh." He let the syllable draw itself out, watching her. When she didn't reply, he turned to the bunny doll again, twitching it between his hands. "She doesn't think that her Kougaiji-sama would kill innocents. Fancy that."  
  
"He wouldn't," she said flatly.  
  
"Mm -- so Sanzou-houshi-sama and his three mignons aren't innocents? No? No, perhaps not. But what about anyone else? Do you think that if his mother was at risk, he'd think twice?"  
  
Yaone remembered the look in Kougajii's eyes, the look that was always there when he spoke of his mother, when he looked at her frozen form, caught out of time in that pillar of stone, and for a moment she had no answer.  
  
"Is that what you want?" Nii reached out and brushed one finger against the marking on her arm. His flesh was fever hot. "Is that who you want to be?"  
  
"Don't touch me," she answered, the words sharp and harsh.  
  
"He's never going to . . ."  
  
"Let me inform you that I do not care whether he does or doesn't," she broke in before he could finish, not wanting to hear those words in his mouth. "I don't care who he goes to. I don't care if he goes to Dokugakuji. I don't care who he wants or what he wants. I want him to be able to choose what he wants."  
  
Nii withdrew his hand, and stroked along one of the bunny's ears. "My, my. How disinvolved. Don't you think?"  
  
"That is not what I'd call it," she said bitterly.  
  
"Oh come now, I wasn't talking to you. But who is he now, mm? Much happier. Don't you want him to be happy?"  
  
She looked towards the unmoving Kougaiji. "He isn't _happy_. He isn't anything."  
  
"Much better -- no? Not as if one can make people happy, anyhow. You absolutely bathe yourself in blood for them, and what do they do then? Take the knife out of your hands and, well, that comes later, perhaps?"   
  
"Give me something useful." This conversation was going nowhere. Apparently she would have to direct it herself. Very well. "You told me you'd give me tools. Was that just another part of the game, for you?"  
  
He widened his eyes as though shocked. "Oh no no no, quite the contrary. But you want to change your prince, mm? Then you need to know who he is. Such a little thing, but --"   
  
The smell of sweat, the smell of tobacco, the smell of old blood, the smell of Lirin's hair, why could she smell that now?  
  
"-- it's odd how nobody ever --"  
  
So bright.  
  
"-- wants to look. Even at themselves, mm? And if you want to change Yaone --"  
  
Tilt. The world tilts. Fractures.  
  
"-- then who is Yaone?"  
  
His hand so hot against the markings on her arm.  
  
---

Fanfic Page 


	5. Preparation

Chapter Five   
  
They were in the laboratory. Yaone hated the place; things moved in ways that they should not move, metal working against metal, liquid moving through liquid in a way that was a thousand miles from the simpler stills and alembics of her own craft. Patterns flickered across a computer screen, fluctuating to the rhythms of a pulse. Not her own pulse, fast as it was, but something lighter, quicker. A child's pulse.  
  
"Where is Lirin?" she asked.  
  
"Oh?" Nii released her arm, turned to the rabbit doll again. "There you are, I told you how she couldn't be trusted. Changing her mind already." He laughed, a small cough of a noise. "Show them the carrots and watch them jump."  
  
Yaone folded her arms, shoulders rigid and tense. "You knew that I'd ask about her when you brought me here. It's not impossible to care about more than one thing at the same time."  
  
"Isn't it?" His hand slid lewdly under the doll's clothing. "Don't you believe in -- overmastering passions?"  
  
_Try to think as he thinks . . ._  
  
"That makes people dolls," she answered. "You do like dolls, don't you, Nii-hakase?"  
  
"My, my." He looked at her, eyes like needles. "Sharper, sharper -- be careful, you'll cut yourself. You want me to tell you where Lirin is, mm? Why should I? We didn't bargain over that."  
  
"No. We didn't. But if you do . . ." _Dolls. He makes people into dolls. He thinks he knows what motivates us, what makes us puppets that he can pick up and put down again._ Anger stirred in her, very deep, very near to the bone. _Kougaiji-sama. Dokugakuji. Myself. Last night's little drama. All a game to him._ "If you do I'll answer a question for you." She smiled. It took all she had not to bare her teeth.  
  
"Ohhh." He stepped closer to her. "Mm. I like that."  
  
She wasn't going to shy away.  
  
He grinned and nodded. "I'll play. Tell me, Yaone-kun . . . tell me what Gyokumen said to you that time. And what you answered."  
  
Yaone stiffened. Her first response, hot and furious, of _how did you know?_ died in her throat. Of course he could guess. He was the woman's lover. Of course he could suspect some of it.  
  
"Still want to play?"  
  
She twitched a shoulder, hands balling into fists at her side. "I was summoned to her presence shortly after vowing to serve Kougaiji-sama. He was absent at the time. She was in her private chambers."  
  
The bunny tipped its head to one side as Nii stroked it.  
  
"Two of her waiting women were with her." The words came out in jerks. She could still remember the way that the lamps had been low and burned with perfumed oils. "She didn't send them away."  
  
"Mm . . why should she? Oh, go on." The bunny jerked its head in a nod.  
  
Long flowing robes of silk that concealed their bodies, their nails, their knives. Faces sealed and shuttered, but eyes full of knowledge. It wasn't the first time they'd witnessed something like this. "I knelt before the Empress. She was as sweet as honey." She had smelt of vanilla and spices. "She said that she was aware that Prince Kougaiji had taken me into his service, and that naturally she took an interest in his affairs." She wouldn't mention that the bitch had said, _my son_. She wouldn't dignify that with remembrance.  
  
Nii waited.  
  
"She said, I am quite sure that your greatest concern will be the safety of -- of Prince Kougaiji -- and of my beloved daughter. She said, I am sure that you have an interest in their welfare. She reached down and put her hand under my chin so that I looked up at her."  
  
Nii's fingers brushed her neck, moved to cup her chin. "Like that, mm?"  
  
_Of course he'd know._  
  
"Like that."  
  
"Mm."  
  
"And she said, I am quite sure that we understand each other?"  
  
"And what did you say?"  
  
"I said yes."  
  
"And you did understand each other?"  
  
Yaone met Nii's eyes. "We did. And that was all."  
  
He turned away, releasing her chin.  
  
"It was petty, wasn't it?" She remembered Gyokumen in the hall -- was that earlier? Or was it still now, somewhere in this timeless moment? -- and the light in her eyes, the satisfaction in her posture. _Did she ask Doku something like that? Possibly. Will I ever ask him about it? No._  
  
"Now why do you say that?"  
  
Yaone shrugged. The memory still hung around her, foul as overripe fruit, but it was all of a piece with this place; this tower, these people, this world. "Because it was."  
  
"She could change her mind, decide to prove the point." Nii turned back to smile at her. His tongue flicked out to touch the edge of his lips. "What would you do then, mm?"  
  
Yaone shrugged. _Hate. But not despair._ "She _did_ prove the point. She knew, I knew, she knew that I knew. That was all she wanted."  
  
"So easy, so easy . . . very well. Lirin. The Princess is in a pillar of glass, fast asleep. The pillar is somewhere in the laboratory. So what will you do now, mm? Find her and kiss her awake?" He chuckled again.  
  
"Maybe. I will consider." She forced stiff lips into a smile, and would not, would _not_ let herself shake with relief from the tension that had gripped her. _Perhaps I won that. Perhaps I came out even. Just to come out even . . ._  
  
A coldness touched her spine. _When did this become a game?_  
  
Nii took a couple of steps, walking around her. "And you think, that was easy, mm? I can handle him. Like a _doll_. That you didn't really pay anything -- important. But you're always going to know that you told me about it, aren't you? When you look at her, mm, at me. That I know all about it . . ."  
  
The world rippled like water around her. She was standing next to Dokugakuji, behind Kougaji, in the throne room where Gyokumen sat on the throne and delivered judgement. Nii-hakase was not there; no time had passed, nothing had been missed or lost.  
  
"I know," she said softly. "I know."  
  
---  
  
After court was over, several corridors away from the throne room, Dokugakuji propped his shoulders against the wall and stretched, yawning. His body arched gracefully, like Yaone's own spear, and the skirts of his white robe brushed against the floor.  
  
Yaone tried to laugh. "Would you be feeling better now?"  
  
He pulled away from the wall, rolling his shoulders. "Anything's better than there."  
  
"I know where Lirin is," she said, quickly, before she could think better of it and stop herself. "You asked, in there, but I couldn't say then. She's in a pillar of glass, somewhere in the laboratory -- probably like the one that Kougaiji-sama was in. She's asleep."  
  
Dokugakuji looked at her, silent for a moment, eyes dark. "Why are you telling me that, Yaone? Do you have some sort of plan for rescuing her right this minute?"  
  
"No." She looked away. "I just want to make sure you know."  
  
"In case?"  
  
"In case."  
  
Footsteps whispered on the stone floor, and a shadow appeared at the end of the hallway. They both turned to look.  
  
"It's always good to have an "in case"," the strange youkai from the throne room said. He stood balanced on both feet, his posture all casual arrogance. "I do have the right people, I think? The Prince's servitors?"  
  
"You do," Dokugakuji answered. Out of the corner of her eye, Yaone saw his body tense, ready to strike or dodge. Without conscious thought, her left hand drifted down to the pouches which hung at her belt. "You would be?"  
  
"Zakuro." He shook his hair back from his face, shoulders squared to show off his chest, hips cocked in loose display. He waited for a moment, as though expecting a reaction, then bared his teeth in a smile. "I would like to make a proposition to you."  
  
"You have our full attention," Yaone said politely.  
  
Silence hung in the air. Nobody was prowling this part of the palace at the moment. No scurrying servants, no graceful courtiers, no guards, no slaves.  
  
_How interestingly devoid of witnesses_, Yaone thought.  
  
Zakuro gestured gracefully. "I've had it suggested to me that you might want to consider travelling south for a while. I'm told that Prince Kougaiji has estates in that direction, and that his servitors might very well spend a while there in peace and quiet, far from the troubles that loyalty can involve us all in. I thought I'd pass this on, in a disinterested sort of way." He spoke with a fluid rapidity, voice accented and cadenced in a way that reminded Yaone of something. _Mnemonic rhymes. That's it. Rhythms that catch in your mind and snag there._ "From one stranger at court to another."  
  
"_We're_ hardly strangers here," Dokugakuji began, words still within the limits of civility, but sharp. "And -- "  
  
"I must differ," Zakuro broke in. "You're only involved with one person here, from what I've heard? And with his opinions, well, changed . . ." He let the sentence trail away.  
  
"I am afraid you are mistaken," Yaone said, words paid out one by one, eyes on his face. _If he tries something he'll do it now that he knows we won't play along._ "We have no intention of leaving court."  
  
"I see."  
  
He looked at her, then turned to meet Dokugakuji's eyes.  
  
"I would say that's a pity, but frankly, you should have known better."  
  
Dokugakuji froze, stiffening in position.  
  
"Struggle! Fight!" Zakuro spoke as though to Dokugakuji alone, tone all mockery and condescension. "But how can you fight when there's nobody there to fight, Dokugakuji? You're trapped in my world!"  
  
"What have you done?" she hissed in fury.  
  
_Fingers touched her left arm, fever hot against the youkai marking, then brushed for a moment against her eyelids._  
  
Zakuro laughed. "He's trapped in the world of Zakuro-sama! Where I alone am lord! I control everything there! And you too, why should you be left out of it?"  
  
Step by step. She was an apothecary and always would be, whatever else might happen, whatever she might need to do. One worked by careful steps, the cunning hand, the precise eye, the requirements of the task known, the parameters established.  
  
He'd looked Dokugakuji in the eyes and something had changed. He'd taken great pains to look him in the eyes.  
  
_Body memory. Remember where you stand. Remember what you were doing. Remember where your fingers are._  
  
She shut her eyes.  
  
"Oh, clever, clever . . ." Zakuro mocked her. "Shall we play games in the dark together?"  
  
Her fingers moved to the correct pouch, slipped the knot that held it closed, flipped out one of the wax-coated balls there.  
  
"Do you think you can throw that and hit me with it?" His laugh echoed round the corridor. "You don't even know where I am! I might be right next to you --"  
  
_Petty. Good._ She broke the flashpowder ball between her fingers, and it detonated in a burst of light which hurt her eyes even through closed lids, burning her glove and scorching her hand.  
  
Zakuro screamed. The noise came from her left, two paces away, abrupt and genuine. She called her spear into her hands as she turned, gritting her teeth at the pain as she wrapped her burned hand around the wooden shaft, and slammed it directly into him.  
  
A thud. A choke. A collapse. Spear against body, body against wall, body shifting down to the floor . . . She reversed her grip, spinning the spear in her hands, and brought the point round in a quick arc until it touched something which gave under pressure. _There. No further. Yet._ She held position, keeping the distance between point and floor constant.  
  
"If you kill me," Zakuro spat at her, "your friend will be dead too, and what will the Prince do for a catamite then?"  
  
Yaone felt her mouth curve into a thin smile. "Probably no worse than the Empress will when she tries to find another disposable agent." The quality of the pressure against her spearpoint altered, and she leaned forward till she heard Zakuro gasp. "No. Please don't try anything, Zakuro-san. I think it's better if we both walk away from this, don't you? Then I don't need to explain to Kougaiji-sama how you tried to kill Dokugakuji."  
  
"You think he'd care?"  
  
Still no sound from Dokugakuji. She resisted the urge to open her eyes and look.  
  
"Perhaps not in the way you think," she said, paying out the words, "but yes. We are his sworn servants, Zakuro-san. We are _useful_. That's why he keeps us." _And there was another reason. There will be another reason. I will make it so._ "So now I suggest that you release Dokugakuji from your trance, and then I will release you, because I do not wish to have to explain to Gyokumen Koushu . . ." _the light the smell the closeness her hand on me_ ". . . why I have killed one of her servants. That, Zakuro-san, is how these matters are conducted in polite society."  
  
He was silent for a moment. "You will release me?"  
  
"Kougaiji-sama could kill you without needing to explain his actions." Her body was a drawn bow, ready to move and release. "It would be harder for me."  
  
"It would, wouldn't it?" He laughed nastily.  
  
Something released in the air -- a tension snapped, a thread broken. From three paces to her right, Dokugakuji said, "What?" Then again, louder, angrier, "What the _fuck_?"  
  
Yaone swung the spear away and back, and stepped back from Zakuro. "Run," she suggested helpfully.  
  
Footsteps scurried away down the corridor, present one moment, absent the next. She raised an arm to bar Dokugakuji's way. "I'll explain in a moment," she said, eyes still closed.  
  
But really, next to Nii-hakase, Zakuro had been simple in motivation and action. Comprehended. Dealt with. Managed, until the next time. She'd used her tools and won.  
  
_When did this become a game?_  
  
---

Fanfic Page 


	6. Reaction

Chapter Six   
  
The palace was and was not the palace that Yaone knew. Armed youkai in uniforms that were hundreds of years out of date ran past her, shouting orders to each other in what sounded more like desperation and fear than any military fierceness. Everything was in motion; people running around her, jostling her as she gathered the folds of her sleeping robe against her body, children clutching at the skirts of her robe, the stormwinds which were shaking the castle pulling at her loose hair and blowing it around her in long violet furls.  
  
"The toushin taishi!" someone shrieked again and again. "The toushin taishi, the _toushin taishi_!"  
  
_I'm dreaming again_, she thought, and the concept consoled her. Dreams were preferable to insanity, however hopeless, however strange; one at least woke up from dreams eventually.  
  
She pushed against the tide of struggling youkai, one hand raised to shield her face from the howling winds as she forced her way towards the doors of the main hall. From beyond, she could hear the sound of metal against metal, crashing lightning, howling fire.  
  
_Kougaiji-sama should be here, surely. Where is he? The castle is under attack, surely he would be here if the castle were under attack?_  
  
The last fleeing soldier passed her. The floor was cold under her bare feet as she set one hand on the great door handle. It trembled under her fingers, metal shaking from some concussion beyond.  
  
"Are you sure you want to see?" Nii Jieni's voice came from behind her. It hardly made her jump or shudder, now. She was growing used to such things.  
  
_Am I even surprised that he can enter my dreams? Not really._  
  
"I want to know what it is," she answered, not looking around.  
  
"Your dreams? Mm. Very egotistical. I like it."   
  
"I wouldn't have thought I'd dream based on what _you_ wanted," Yaone snapped.  
  
"Accurate estimation of self is a virtue -- the question is what you do with it. Do you still want to kill me, by the way?" His tone didn't change. The query was as perfectly neutral, as privately amused as the statement before it.  
  
Yaone considered for a moment. "Yes. On general grounds."  
  
"Such as?"  
  
"You're dangerous."  
  
"Oh come now, that's no proper argument. Your Hakkai-dono," he mimicked her inflection, her choice of words, "is dangerous. Isn't he? Don't you like that?"  
  
Yaone drew herself up in rigid courtesy. "Whether I like it or not is not the question. I have no doubt that he is a capable and dangerous person."  
  
"Aren't you going to turn around and look at me, mm?"  
  
"This is my dream." The winds still pulled at her hair and robes. Another explosion made the door tremble under her hand again. She broke off, uncertain what she had been going to say. _I do not want you in my dreams. If I turn around and look at you now, then you will always be in my dreams._  
  
Nii Jieni laughed. "I said that this was a dream. I didn't say it was yours." His tone sharpened. "Wake up."  
  
The floor was cold under Yaone's feet as she opened her eyes.   
  
_and again and again and again_  
  
She was in a part of the castle that she didn't recognise. It was clearly a bedroom corridor, one for courtiers or important guests. And . . . oh, this was _beyond_ embarrassing, she was barefoot in her sleeping robe, the thin silk unbelted and loose, and her hair was unbound, just as she always wore it for sleep, and she was in a bedroom corridor, what would anyone think if she were found here? She had to get out of here, now.  
  
"Sst." A door down the corridor behind her swung open with a quick creak. Yaone spun on the balls of her feet, trying to think of some way to hide herself, and was -- for what she vowed would be the first, last, and only time ever -- glad to see Nii Jieni poking his head around the door. "In here."  
  
She hurried through the partly-open door, slipping under his raised arm. Her nose wrinkled at the unwashed smell of the room. _Human flesh. So sweaty._ His bedroom, clearly.  
  
Nii Jieni shut the door behind her.  
  
_Wait . . ._  
  
---  
  
The room was untidy even by Lirin's standards; a tangled nest of sheets and quilts covered the futon in the far corner, and the floor was a litter of scrolls, books, computer disks, and remnants of food or drink. A single desk lifted a computer out of the general chaos. The chair next to it was marked with countless tiny cigarette burns, and the bunny doll was propped casually in it. Yaone tried to find an empty place to stand that wasn't close to Nii Jieni or his bed.  
  
"So good to see you." She didn't turn to look at him, but she could hear the leer in his voice. "I'd been hoping that you'd drop round, but -- mm, you've always been so shy. Is this a new stage in our relationship?"  
  
Yaone bit the inside of her cheek until she could keep her face still, then folded her arms and finally turned round. He was leaning against the closed door casually, as though the position meant nothing at all. "It would appear that I am here to ask for your advice, Nii-hakase," she said politely.  
  
Nii smiled. He was still in ordinary day wear, stained lab coat, crumpled shirt and tie, casually belted trousers, and toilet slippers. _Toilet slippers._ "You should come by more often, Yaone. What's disturbing you? Moral qualms?"  
  
Yaone shook her head once, determined not to let him get onto the whole topic of _oh so are you really sure you want to save your Kougaiji-sama and what would you give for it_ and any other little areas he wanted to prod her in. Her fingers closed around her forearms. "Not at all. I was dreaming. You were in the dream and told me to wake up. Then I was here -- outside your room, that is, outside in the corridor. If this is something more that you are doing to me . . ."  
  
"I? Oh no no no. You're doing it to yourself. Coffee?"  
  
"No. Thank you," she added automatically.  
  
"Really? Are you sure you want to fall asleep again?"  
  
Yaone could feel her fingernails denting her flesh. She thought about blood and violence and wiping that smile off his face. It helped stay her against the fear that made her flesh crawl, the twin images of the mind's insanity and the flesh's weakness. _If he touches me I'll kill him._ "Could you please explain what you mean when you say that I'm doing it to myself, Nii-hakase?"  
  
He clapped his hands together. "Oh, very nice. Now why don't you get down on your knees and try that again?"  
  
"I trust that you are joking." Courtesy was important. Courtesy stopped her doing something which she would regret later. Courtesy was trained so deeply into her that she was lost without it. Even the scream and the knife were polite, even they knew their duty.  
  
"I thought you might want to remember what it felt like to crawl."  
  
"Hardly."  
  
"Oh, but you're not desperate enough. You're starting to think that you can handle this sensibly. You're such a sensible girl, Yaone." He stepped away from the door, took a pace towards her. Her stomach knotted. "But we're dealing with magic here, as well as science, mm? And what do you know about magic?"  
  
"Only what one can read. I do not practice it myself, except for the tricks of calling my spear and working alchemy." She would call her spear if he took another step closer. She promised it to herself. The promise let her keep her voice level. "Kougaiji-sama works true magic."  
  
"Bah. He's a scholar. He doesn't go to the blood and bone of it." Nii's eyes glittered. "That's where it starts, mm? A thousand deaths for a new life. Washed in blood to begin again. The insanity of a people for the rebirth of a king. Scholars practice magic and Immortals live forever, but the magic that will _change_ things is rooted in need and desperation. You have to want it. Mm. How badly do you want your spell?"  
  
A half-memory of an earlier conversation that she'd heard between Kougaji-sama and Dokugakuji flickered in the back of her mind for a moment. _But if that's true,_ Dokugakuji had said, _that means any child born like that is . . ._  
  
"You must get very tired of creating sterile things," she said flatly. "Is that why you're so interested in helping me?"  
  
"Oh no. No." A breath, a blink; he'd moved faster than her eyes could follow, and she was taking a step backwards, stumbling over the debris that littered the floor, a polystyrene cup crunching under her foot; another step and her shoulders jarred against the wall. Nii leaned forward, into her personal space, and his right hand rested against her stomach. There was nothing sexual against it. She could feel the heat of his fingers and palm through her robe. "Not at all."  
  
Yaone's body clenched back against the wall. She bared her teeth in a snarl. "Let go of me."  
  
"I'm teaching you something. Don't you _want_ to understand?"  
  
She'd been through this before in her head, and shied aside from the image each time. _What if he wants my body as part of his payment? What then?_ It would have been simple enough to say, no, I will die before I dishonour myself. It would have been just as easy to say yes, anything for Kougaiji-sama, my life, my body, everything. And when it came down to this, here in her sleeping robe against the wall of his chamber, all that was left was, not him. Not him. Not _him_.   
  
So easy to say, _this wasn't our bargain_.  
  
He was pushing her further each time.  
  
"I want to understand," Yaone answered.  
  
Something in his eyes shifted. "Why do you serve?"  
  
"Because I swore my loyalty." The question made no sense.  
  
"Why don't you evver wish to be anything more?"  
  
It was impossible to be unaware of his physical presence. "Because -- because Kougaiji-sama is my lord, why should I _want_ to challenge him?"  
  
"You could challenge Doku, mm? Don't you ever get tired of being the second one? The one who your Kougaiji-sama will protect but leaves behind to look after his sister? Perhaps if you beat your senpai into the ground, he'd be a little more ... tolerant . . . about what you want from his prince?"  
  
Yaone took a breath. "It's not like that."  
  
Nii smiled. "Isn't it?" He leaned in closer, against her. The stubble on his cheek brushed her smoother skin.   
  
She would not shut her eyes.  
  
"I'll tell you a secret," he whispered in her ear. "Shall I?"  
  
"Go on, Nii-hakase." Her voice had fallen to a murmur, like his own. This dreadful intimacy prohibited anything more.  
  
"Sa Jien killed his own mother."  
  
Her body trembled, and she knew that he felt it. She wanted to believe that it was a lie, but -- she wanted, she wanted to believe that it was a lie . . .  
  
"There was something he wanted very badly indeed." Warm breath against her ear, her neck. "So he took his father's old sword and ran her through and she fell from the blade of the sword and hit the ground, like that. And the blood ran all over the floor. Isn't that a nice secret?"  
  
Yaone tried to breathe.  
  
"Don't you think that your Kougaiji-sama would like to know about that?"  
  
"He knows," Yaone answered without thinking, and something of the binding cord of tension snapped.  
  
"Mm? You think so?" But the command had drained from Nii's voice as well, and now there was only amusement there.  
  
_Yes. He knows. Because I know Dokugakuji and I know Kougaiji-sama and you may know them but you do not understand them._ "He knows," she repeated. "And I know what I want."  
  
"So you do." He drew back a little from her. "And you want to understand what's going on. Yes. Such a pity you're being left to stumble through it yourself, so hard for you, but then you are a servant, aren't you? Just as you said. You're waiting for someone to move you. So I drive you. Because you won't go otherwise."  
  
"If that is what is required," Yaone said steadily, "then I will go."  
  
"And don't you want anything else?" His face, his body, him next to her, holding her against the wall with nothing but his hand against her flesh.  
  
_Closeness is such a terrible thing._ Was this what Gyokumen wanted from him? _I will not scream._ "Tell me what you did, Nii-hakase."  
  
"I just -- unfixed you a little. With your consent, of course. You had to _want_ it. Badly." He made something obscene of the words. "You're betwixt and between now. Walking on the edge between waking and dream. Haven't you noticed anything odd?"  
  
"A little bit now and then," Yaone said, her lips numb.  
  
"This whole tower is riddled with dreams. Mm? Yes. Yes, exactly." Nii nodded as though she had made an intelligent comment. "All tied together by what's below. _Him._ He's at the edge of all our nightmares. Nataku might have bound the body, but he couldn't bind everything."  
  
"That -- that was Gyumaoh's dream which I was in?" The thought kindled an unholy mixture of terror and curiosity. _If I had opened the doors, what would I have seen?_  
  
"Oh yes." Nii Jieni smiled again. "And none of us are free of it. Not even your Kougaiji-sama. The doors are opening, Yaone. The walls are coming down one by one. Soon you will be able to walk into your Kougaiji-sama's dreams, and . . ." He let the words tail away.  
  
"And save him," she stated.  
  
"And do whatever you want to do." He caught a length of her hair in his free hand. "And maybe you'll even wake up afterwards, mm?"  
  
"And if I want it badly enough?" she asked, her tone as dry as his.  
  
"Shh." His hand came up against her throat, fingers moving to press against her carotid arteries, _what a stupid thing it is to think of anatomy at such a time_, and she could feel the strands of her hair caught between his hand and her neck like threads of silk. "Go to sleep."  
  
He was haloed in red.  
  
"You're nearly there. Go back to your dreams."  
  
There was blood. There was the pressure against her throat. There was his voice.  
  
"You'll know when . . ."  
  
There was darkness.  
  
---  
  
The morning light was a brilliant edge around the woven blind as Yaone opened her eyes, and her bedroom was bright enough for her to see her reflection in the mirror.  
  
_There is no dream, no reality, only where I am now and where I have to go._  
  
A band of purple bruising threaded with tiny hair-fine scarlet cuts circled her neck.  
  
_Only where I am now and where I have to go._  
  
---

Fanfic Page 


	7. Precipitation

Chapter Seven   
  
_And in the morning, Yaone went to her laboratory._  
  
Her feet led her there. She walked along the corridor and her feet knew the way, they guided her, and the walls stood at either side like dark mist, but she found her way there. It was morning and she was in her laboratory. That was how things should be.  
  
Her hands knew their task as well; this was how they moved, this was how they handled tubes of glass and fires and heat and tiny portions of drugs. She could have watched her gloved fingers all day long. A dry smell of wormwood hung in the air, cleaner than the incense or perfumes which scented other parts of the fortress.  
  
Yaone could not shake off the feeling that this was a last moment of peace before the storm. It couldn't last, and yet it was so utterly precious; here, now, to be doing something which she did well, which she understood, where she was of value. Something that was so much part of her life that she couldn't imagine herself without it.  
  
_Surely I am dreaming again. But this time, at least, I am happy._  
  
"Excuse me." The voice came from by the door; a familiar voice, though not a close one. Yaone turned her head to see Howan-hakase standing there. The woman was hesitating in the doorway, feet still the other side of the threshold.  
  
"Can I help you?" Yaone asked politely.  
  
_How smoothly things run in dreams, through you and past you; people arrive, they say their piece, they are gone when you look again._  
  
"May I come in?"  
  
Yaone smiled in a moment's fellow-feeling; of course one skilled worker would respect another's stillroom. "Please do." She set down the flask which she was holding.  
  
Howan-hakase closed the door behind her. Her hair swung around her head in a short fan of curls. "I haven't seen you smile like that for a while."  
  
Yaone blinked. "In that case, it was kind of you to visit and give me cause for it."  
  
Howan-hakase gestured sharply with one hand. "We haven't got time for this. Look, whatever he wants you to do -- don't do it."  
  
"He?"  
  
"You know who. _Him_. I know he's playing games with you."  
  
"And if he is?" Yaone asked carefully.  
  
"Then you can't win. The best thing you can do is not to play in the first place."  
  
"Why are you saying this to me?"  
  
Howan-hakase glared at her through thick-lensed spectacles. "Because I don't want him to win another of his games. Is that motivation enough?"  
  
How lazy, how sweet, how gentle the flow of conversation. "And what if I don't have an option, Howan-hakase?"  
  
The scientist snorted. "Don't give me that. If you didn't have a choice, he wouldn't be playing. That's how he works."  
  
Yaone tilted her head, folded her hands together. The smells of willow bark and sandalwood hung in the air from when she had been compounding them earlier. "What game did he try to play with you, Howan-hakase?"  
  
"Bah." The other woman hesitated for a moment, as though torn between walking out at the question, or answering it. After a moment, she said, "He -- offers things. Things that people dream about. People that people dream about."  
  
"And you said no."  
  
"Of course I said no. No person is worth selling yourself over."  
  
"Is that how you see it?" Yaone asked, the dream making her curiosity a slow unfolding growth rather than bridling it as she would have done before.  
  
"Of course. I thought you at least would understand that. Knowledge is the only thing worth the getting." She folded her arms righteously.  
  
"And yet . . ." _And yet,_ Yaone thought, _and yet, and yet. Here you are at the heart of youkai power, trying to revive Gyumaoh, Howan-hakase. What happens if you succeed? How much guilt will you carry for it, or was it all worth it for the sake of the knowledge gained?_  
  
"And yet he looks at me. Like that. As if he owns me. So. I have no obligation towards you, Yaone-san, but I felt that a word of warning might be appropriate." Howan-hakase nodded, a quick jerk of her head, and turned to open the door.   
  
"Howan-hakase . . ." Yaone said slowly.  
  
"Yes?" The scientist paused.  
  
"Is the knowledge worth anything to you? Anything at all?"  
  
Howan-hakase hesitated. "Yes," she said finally. "Anything at all." Something fluttered behind her eyes, an emotion like a wounded bird, dancing for the snake and caught and lost.  
  
The words came out like barbs, tearing at Yaone's own heart as she spoke. _Because, for no other reason, she came here to try to save me . . ._ "And do you think that he doesn't know that about you?"  
  
Howan-hakase slammed the door behind her.  
  
---  
  
_And in the afternoon, Yaone attended court._  
  
Kougaiji-sama was not attending. Dokugakuji was with Kougaiji-sama. She knew these things, but she was not sure how she knew them. It was part of the dream that she should be aware of these things. Perhaps she had seen something earlier that had made her aware, or perhaps Dokugakuji had said something to her and now she had forgotten it.   
  
She was moving in and out of time and reality like a fish slipping between the meshes of a net, like a shadow of a branch shaken by the wind, like a hawk falling from the sky in a single screaming stoop. It didn't matter. She was walking on a path that would take her where she wanted.  
  
Gyokumen sat in splendour and held court, and Yaone stood in the shadows to watch her. This time she could appreciate the woman's beauty as if it were something in a foreign language, a poisoned fruit which would be sweet in the mouth but bitter in the stomach. Perhaps Gyokumen would always be sitting there, even a hundred years later, even after her death; her ghost would walk here among the dreams, trailing long silk robes, smiling with those cherry lips, long nails flashing in the dying light, long fingers reaching out to take and hold and toy with.  
  
Zakuro's voice came from the shadows near her. "I didn't think you'd dare to show your face in public."  
  
Yaone kept her eyes on Gyokumen. As long as she didn't meet the other youkai's gaze, she was safe from those powers of his, and this place was too public for him to try anything gaudier, such as a knife between the ribs, or a wire around the throat, or any other game that would spill blood before Gyokumen's throne. "Why so, Zakuro-san?" She gave him the honorific, though she doubted that he deserved it. His manner was that of a jumped-up peasant.  
  
"I'm going to kill you. You are aware of that, I hope?" Such malice in his voice. He could barely control himself enough to keep that cadenced tone, that balanced flow of words.  
  
"Mm -- I regret that I was forced to the point of having to cause you so much annoyance, Zakuro-san. It would have been preferable if we had not had to cross each other's paths." _It would have been yet more preferable if I could have killed you. You are a poisonous insect and a danger to my Prince._  
  
"You're only talking like that because it was your friend who was in my world. Not you. If you'd been there, if you'd been in my power -- then I don't think you'd be so calm, Yaone-san. Not so calm at all."  
  
"Perhaps not," she agreed.  
  
The light shone around Gyokumen, queen in a world of madness.  
  
This was a nightmare, then.  
  
He sniggered. "I just thought you might want to know what I was going to do to you. Something to bear in mind at night."  
  
They were two voices, together in a bright-jewelled court full of whispers and candleflames. Night would be falling outside soon. People would be dreaming. But she was already dreaming, walking through the corridors of dream, where one thing came after another and all that there was to do was to accept it and go on.  
  
"I am aware that you may try to kill me, Zakuro-san." Words came to her, spoke through her, were gone. "I am sure that you will make it unpleasant. I will do my best to resist. But you are not going to do it here, so shall we take the threat as given and let it be?"  
  
_You shouldn't speak to him like that_, something at the back of her mind whispered. _You're giving him the bitterest medicine that anyone could; you're ignoring him, you're pushing him aside, you're making him irrelevant. He'll hate that. You should be more careful, Yaone. You should be careful . . ._  
  
"Ah. You think you can sound brave." He sniggered again. "I know better than that."  
  
"I'm sorry, Zakuro-san." The dream swept her on, a leaf in the river. "I have more important things to worry about at the moment." _And he can hate me if he wants_, she answered herself, calm and placid. _It's quite true. He isn't important at the moment._  
  
"Bitch. _Bitch._"  
  
"Yes, Zakuro-san."  
  
_Only Kougaiji-sama is important._  
  
"I want you to know that I'll get close to you. You won't know when. You won't know how. But I will look in your eyes and you will be in _my_ world."  
  
His words were pieces of crystal that fell to the ground and shattered with agreeable tones, a thousand miles away from her, a thousand hours away from her.  
  
"You're going to die slowly, and the face you will see doing it to you -- doing everything to you -- will be your, your _precious_ Prince." He spat the words at her, choking on his own bile.  
  
It wasn't real. It was the nightmare.  
  
"I want you to know that."  
  
He was a petty creature, taunting and threatening, and perhaps he had real power, perhaps he could do what he said he could do, but for a single instant she turned to look towards him.  
  
Zakuro clearly hadn't expected her to look at him, clearly hadn't though she'd take the risk. She saw him -- so young, so arrogant, so desperate -- and then looked away from him before he could focus his concentration and meet her eyes.  
  
"Zakuro-san," Yaone said, the words coming to her again with the same ease as her earlier conversation, with the same weight of truth. "Get out of here. You gave us a warning, and now I return it to you. This is not a safe place. This is not a sane place. You could make your way better elsewhere. There are kinder patrons and there are lords and ladies who will return loyalty for loyalty, care for care, protection for service, honour for honour. Get out while you can."  
  
There was silence from where he had been standing.  
  
"Please go," she said.  
  
He laughed again. Perhaps it was his habitual answer. "You've had your warning, Yaone-san. Your pitiful begging isn't going to change my mind now."  
  
"A pity," she said, but she knew that the words were for herself. He wasn't listening.  
  
Gyokumen rose and declared that the court was at an end.  
  
---  
  
_And in the evening, Yaone sought out Nii Jieni._  
  
The silence of the castle was a thick robe of silk folded around her. She wore it like armour as she walked through the corridors, her hair bound back for battle, her hands gloved and her eyes wide open and full of shadows.  
  
He came upon her unexpectedly, as she turned a corner and saw herself reflected in a long mirror that hung at the end of the corridor, and him beside her. He was taller than her, a threatening ghost in the darkened reflection, overshadowing her.  
  
"Yaone-kun," Nii Jieni said, and smiled. "Were you looking for me."  
  
"It is time," Yaone answered. Piece after piece of the mosaic fell into place around her, settling down towards a centre of stillness. "You said that I would know when."  
  
"I did, didn't I?" His fingers brushed her chin as he looked into her eyes. "Hm. Dear me, Yaone, if I weren't a medical man I would say that you were drugged. Does it feel good, mm? To have everything taken away from you like that?"  
  
"It is the dreams," she answered. "It is all the same now for me." There was a time when she wouldn't have spoken so freely to him, but she had chosen to leave that behind, hadn't she? It was part of the price.  
  
"Is it? Good, good." He wasn't carrying his bunny doll this time, she noticed. "Well, I'm very sorry, Yaone, but I'm going to have to take that away from you as well. From one extreme to the other -- interesting, isn't it? Follow me."  
  
The mirror waited for them at the end of the corridor.  
  
"Do you see the mirror?" Nii asked her.  
  
"I do," she answered, looking at her reflection. Such huge drugged eyes, such a pale face. _Are you still there, Yaone? Just a little longer._  
  
"The mirror's a gateway. Mm? Do you believe it's a gateway, Yaone?"  
  
His face so close to hers in the mirror. _Thus far I have trusted. Thus far I have chosen to give my faith._ "To where I need to go?"  
  
"Yes. Yes, you put it nicely."  
  
_Whatever he wants you to do, don't do it,_ Howan-hakase had said.  
  
"You need to go through the mirror now, Yaone. Take off your glove."  
  
Her reflection hesitated, then began to work the long sleeve of silk down her arm and over her hand. Silence still lay around them like the light from a candle. She rolled up the silk and tucked it away in a pouch at her belt.  
  
"Mm. _Good_ girl. Now reach out your hand and go through the mirror."  
  
Light for a moment in her mind, in her heart, and a sudden illumination that was unshaped and unformed, and gone again before she could catch it. _All dreams, all delusion, and we find our satori as part of it, through lying with each other, through the falling of a leaf, through the practice of our craft, through a moment's song, through a moment's pity, and if the dreams are my key to Kougaiji-sama's imprisonment, then that is no less than any imprisonment, than my own imprisonment. That easy. That hard._  
  
The glass rippled like water as Yaone's hand touched it, drew away from her hand, and she plunged into the mirror as though it was a curtain of dark water, through to the other side.  
  
---

Fanfic Page 


	8. Condensation

Chapter Eight   
  
On the other side of the mirror, Yaone woke up. It was an abrupt change between states; one moment she had been dreaming, and now she was awake, and fear and pain and the consciousness of danger crowded around her.  
  
Beside her stood Nii Jieni, but here he was dressed as a priest -- no, as a Sanzou, with robe and crown and veil and sutra. His glasses were the same, though, and his face had not changed, still unshaven, still smirking.  
  
She was as she had been, one hand still ungloved.  
  
The passageway was the same. _Well, of course. It's a reflection. How should it be anything different?_ She turned to see the mirror behind them, their own reflections ghostly in the dark glass.  
  
"Can't go back now," Nii Jieni said. His voice was amused, as always, privately amused but not bothering to hide the fact. "Coming?"  
  
"Of course," Yaone answered.  
  
"Mm, good, good. This way." He began to lead the way down the corridor. She followed half a step behind, her booted feet quiet on the stone floor, softer than the scuff of his sandals.   
  
"Will this take us directly to Kougaiji-sama's mind?" she asked, as they came to the first juncture. The place was more silent than usual, without even the small noises that haunted the castle -- the waking castle? the real castle? -- every night. _And what if we wander into someone else's dreams?_  
  
"Mnh. Well, Yaone -- there is one thing I didn't quite get round to mentioning, but you know how it is." He turned to smile at her, eyes malicious. "Didn't want to scare you off. Tch, tch. But perhaps I should have told you, mm? Given you time to -- think about it?"  
  
She tried to call the serenity of the previous hours to herself, but it was gone in rags and tatters, shredded away by this awakening. In lieu of calmness, she forced herself to shrug. "It's too late now for me to complain, Nii-hakase. What is it?"  
  
"Only this." He raised one hand to gesture the smallness of it. His long white sleeve trailed out and billowed. "Your -- prince will be trying to force you out, mm? Nobody likes having their dreams, their mind invaded. Nobody likes the prying fingers in there, even such pretty fingers as yours -- mm, Yaone-kun? To touch and explore and unfold and go inside . . ."  
  
Yaone's breath caught as she bit her lip. She would _not_ give him the anger which he was trying to provoke.  
  
"Oh yes. Oh _yes_. Exactly like that. Fury. Disgust. That -- shudder of the body, of the mind. Like that. Mm." He was still smiling, still smirking, the dim light gleaming on his crown and glasses and breastplate. "That's what he'll try to do to you. _Just_ like that."  
  
"Can't I try not to --" She broke off. Of course she wouldn't be able to avoid some sort of interference if she was trying to help him. Even a surgeon had to anaesthetise and restrain a patient.  
  
"No. No no no, not at all, even your _footsteps_ will be felt. Like that. And that." He gestured with the tips of his fingers.  
  
"Well, you would know," Yaone answered in blazing despair. "You've already done it to him."  
  
"Oh yes." Nii leaned towards her, close enough that she could feel his breath on her skin. "And. How. He. Squirmed."  
  
"You are telling me nothing that I don't already know," Yaone whispered.  
  
"Ah. But before you could imagine it didn't happen, mm?" He drew back a pace. "Well, go on, Yaone. Go on in. He knows you're coming. Somewhere, he knows it's you. He'll be -- waiting for you. Go on."  
  
Her hand itched to call her spear. "And you, Nii-hakase?"  
  
He shrugged. His robes fluttered. "Oh, I'll be -- right behind you."  
  
She turned away from him and walked down the corridor. Behind her, she could hear his footsteps, the soft swishing of his robe, and she tried to ignore it, nor even to take any sort of comfort from it.   
  
_What good does it do me to know he's there? I can't trust him._  
  
The air smelt of torch smoke and candles now, and she could hear the soft noises of a living place around her. This wasn't Gyumaoh's castle any more; it was another place, one that she didn't recognise.  
  
_Oh but you do_, something whispered inside her.  
  
Yaone pulled her focus inwards, concentrated.   
  
_Kougaiji-sama knows you're here, knows it's you, but he will not tolerate your presence any more than a man in raging fever can bear a friend's touch or the doctor's hand on his brow. He will try to drive you away._  
  
The sounds were all around her now -- scurrying feet, half-heard mocking whispers, laughter, and a note in the laughter that set the teeth on edge and made her afraid.  
  
_You're in Kougaiji-sama's dreams now, Yaone . . ._  
  
. . . and she still sometimes had nightmares of a place where she had never walked, and which was ruins and ashes now, but which had touched her life and altered its path, the worst place in the world . . .  
  
_. . . and he knows what your worst nightmare is._  
  
Whispers became sound, light became image, movement became people moving and shoving around her. The guards on either side twisted her arms behind her back.  
  
"Fresh meat for Hyakugan Maoh!" a voice howled in the crowd.  
  
_. . . he knows, and he will use it against you without even thinking, driven by instinct and pain . . ._  
  
Yaone tensed and tried to struggle, bracing her feet against the floor. They dragged her on.  
  
She could make it go away. She knew that, somewhere in that part of her which was conscious of this as real, which felt her feet scrape against the floor, felt the large hands on her arms, smelt torch smoke and cooked meat as coarseness in the air. She could make it go away, and then she would be out of here -- and out of Kougaiji-sama's mind as well, out and gone and not to return. Nii wouldn't bring her back afterwards. He wasn't the sort who gave second chances in this sort of game that he so enjoyed.  
  
_Think. Think logically._ Nii had explained this as something which made sense, she'd give him that much. There had to be a way through it other than simply refusing it, or -- or whatever Nii had done. _He probably tore it to bits and couldn't care less about whatever damage he did to Kougaiji-sama's mind._ There had to be something which she could do which would, in context, make sense. There had to be.  
  
_Or perhaps you've already lost, and either you fail and give up or you die here, and either way it's a kind of death . . ._  
  
The great arch leading to the main hall loomed in front of her.  
  
_Not just Kougaiji-sama's dream, but my dream as well, and Nii-hakase's dream too. We're all in the same dream. I don't have to reject it_, she thought, and prayed that she was right. _I just have to change it._  
  
_Because I know this isn't true._  
  
She'd been to the empty place that was left, the scarred earth, the green valley. She'd gone alone because it was something that she had to do for herself, unprotected, undefended, something which she had to face alone, and at the time it had done no good at all. It hadn't stopped the nightmares. It hadn't stopped the dreams, either. All it had done was let her see the dimpled ground where the castle had once stood, and where now greenery covered the earth as though nothing had ever happened there since the beginning of time, nothing at all. No malice, no rape, no hunger, no butchery, only the grass and the spring air and the tumbled brown earth.  
  
_This is what earth smells like._ Not sweaty flesh, not guttering candles, not overly strong perfume trying to hide the rot beneath. _This is what grass smells like when it is bruised underfoot, when it grows in a place where nobody ever comes, when the dew has dried but it is not yet noon._  
  
Not darkness.  
  
_This is the morning light when it shines down in silence, and nobody would ever believe what lay beneath the earth._  
  
The hands slackened on her arms -- no, not slackened, but were no longer there in the same way that they had been before. She was walking both in the crowded castle corridor and on the fresh grass, both in noise and in silence, both in terror and in quiet.  
  
She was almost at the great arch now, a huge mouth ready to open on her and devour her.  
  
Her control slipped; her image slipped; the sunlit grass wavered, the crowd of youkai returned more strongly. Long-nailed fingers tugged at her hair and pinched and probed at her. Almost she screamed, _No, I will not, let me go, LET ME GO_, and almost she was gone from there entirely, thrown out of the dream and falling away.  
  
_Kougaiji-sama saved me._  
  
Step. A pale-haired youkai with the air of an aristocrat looked at her, and licked his nails, and laughed.  
  
_This is a dream._  
  
Step. Almost at the arch now. Darkness beyond.  
  
Deep now. The deepest roots. _I am in Kougaiji-sama's service. He saved me from this. Therefore it cannot be true._  
  
Through the arch.  
  
It was a different place now, a stone-walled room that was familiar to her from the many times that she had found Kougaiji-sama here. The stone-bound form of his mother stood at the centre of the room _(though it was never like this before, with the walls receding to infinity except where they are close enough to brush coldly against your back)_ wound around with cords and _ofuda_, and on it hung Kougaiji-sama, _(Kougaiji-sama)_, naked and silent, bound by the same cords, his arms upstretched and still, bronze against stone, as quiet and unmoving as death.  
  
But, look. His chest moved. He breathed.  
  
Something hissed and whispered and shifted in the shadows, long and pale. It wasn't Nii Jieni. It was something else.  
  
---

Fanfic Page 


	9. Inspiration

Chapter Nine   
  
_Cut him down_ was the first thought that went through Yaone's mind. She summoned her spear to her hands, in a gesture as automatic as breathing, and ran towards the central pillar.  
  
The air itself swept her back, in a stream of blows that slapped at her like the cuts of a whip. She tumbled, came to her feet, caught herself, and looked up to see Gyokumen posed above Kougaiji where he hung on the pillar.  
  
"He's mine," Gyokumen said, draping long arms over Kougaiji's shoulders so that her silken sleeves fell over his body and slid across his flesh. One long-nailed hand traced the line of his neck. "He always was my toy, but Nii-hakase just made things a little more -- definite. Didn't you, Nii-hakase?"  
  
"It was my pleasure to serve the Empress," came Nii Jieni's voice from behind Yaone. She turned for a moment to see him standing there, still dressed as a Sanzou, white robes stirring in the cold air.   
  
"Whose side are you on?" Yaone spat over her shoulder, knowing that the words were useless.  
  
"Mnh -- mine, I think?" His glasses hid his eyes. "I give people what they want. Perhaps you should have wanted more."  
  
Gyokumen slithered down the pillar like a lizard or a snake, all bright deep colour and smooth movement, her hair swaying around her face. "I own everything here. I own you too, Yaone. Get on your knees, child."  
  
Yaone presented her spear. "I am in Kougajii-sama's service," she said formally, finding a little solace in the words which she had repeated so often, which were so much a part of her. "I am bound to him. He is Gyumaoh's full son by Ratsetsunyo. You are Gyumaoh's concubine. You own _nothing_."  
  
Gyokumen's laughter rang in the air like glass bells in a fox-haunted temple. "You are a child. Kougaiji is my son here." Her nails stroked his lower leg, ran along the curve of his foot. "He is my lover. He is my pet. He is my slave. And I am everything in the world to him. You have no place here. Get out." Her words thrust at Yaone, a physical force like hands against her body which pushed her backwards.  
  
Yaone planted the butt of her spear against the ground to balance herself. "I am Kougaiji-sama's sworn servant! Unless he dismisses me himself, unless I hear the words from his mouth, _nobody_ else can bid me go."  
  
And the room was a fraction lighter, a hairsbreadth warmer, an inch more alive.  
  
_He hears me._ It was an understanding rather than a conscious thought, because the relief, the sheer joy in Yaone's mind, was too great a thing to be given words. _I can reach him._  
  
"Tell her to go," Gyokumen commanded Kougaiji. The light flickered on her skin, as smooth and clear as jade, as white as frozen pearls. She wore seduction like one of her silken robes. "Or better yet, tell her to kneel before me and serve me as she should."   
  
It had not been like this before. This was a cold crawling desperation of the flesh, a madness of the blood. It swept through Yaone and left her staggering. _It is like this because he perceives it thus -- she is like this because this is how she is to him, how she is now and here, terrible and beautiful and irresistible and unconquerable and he is lost and knows he cannot resist her . . ._ The words rattled around inside her head, meaningless constructions against the flood of hopeless obedience and need.  
  
_I understand_, she had told Gyokumen once before. But that had been real and this was a dream, or perhaps that had been the dream, and this was all that was real, here and now.  
  
And there had been another person who she could have gone to, who she had dreamed of, and each time in that dream she had said . . .  
  
"No!" she screamed into the echoing silence. "I am Kougaiji-sama's and without his leave I will not give myself to anyone else!"  
  
"He wouldn't ask that of you," Gyokumen whispered.  
  
"I don't care," Yaone answered, and held to the words like a spar in a storm. _A man cannot serve two masters and perhaps I cannot ever be his but I will not be another's. I will not give up what I am just because she asks it of me._  
  
Perhaps there was a momentary brightness to the air. Perhaps not.  
  
"Child, child, silly child." Gyokumen advanced towards her, moving away from where Kougaiji hung helpless and silent. "You cannot possibly win. This is Kougaiji's heart. I am here and I will be here forever. Nobody can drive me out. Nobody can bid me leave. Nobody can take me away from him. I have a right to him and you have none."  
  
Stormwinds swelled out from Gyokumen, shaking the air with their fury, thrashing around Yaone and forcing her inexorably back towards the cavern's entrance. They sang of hopelessness and denial, of refusals, of every step which led to submission and acceptance and laying down her weapons and even a sick pleasure in the knowledge. _You have always been nothing. You have never had a place here. See how much easier it is when you admit it?_  
  
And the worst of it was that Yaone realised that the power behind Gyokumen's words was founded in truth. Here in Kougaiji's dreams -- his heart, his mind, his soul, call it what she would -- Gyokumen was ensconced like a worm inside a nut, and Kougaiji didn't _believe_ that he could stop her, that Yaone could stop her, that anyone could stop her. She was his pet nightmare, his personal hatred, his very own knowledge of failure and pain. Nobody else was that important to him --  
  
-- wait.  
  
This was the place where what Kougaiji believed became real. The idea bloomed like a lotus, complete within the moment of its conception, and somehow perfect in that completeness.  
  
"His mother has more right to him than you have," Yaone screamed against the wind. "Rasetsunyo-sama! Save your son!" Her spear flew through the air, shearing through ofuda and spell-cords, and slammed into the base of the pillar where Kougajiji's mother stood imprisoned in stone.   
  
Light zigzagged up the stone pillar in a pattern of fractures, shattering the stone behind it, ripping apart the structure of the spell. Kougaiji's bindings loosened, detached, and fell to the ground in a tumble of pale threads like spiderwebs. The figure of the woman reached out and took her son in her arms, head bowed over him in silence, light emanating out from her in heatless waves that made Gyokumen scream and cower and melt like snow at dawn. And Yaone felt tears in her eyes as something stronger than the earlier desire tugged at her, pulling her towards Rasetsunyo -- _or the memory of Rasetsunyo, or the dream of Rasetsunyo, or does it matter?_ -- as she would have run to her own mother.  
  
_I will protect you_, the presence said. _Here there is light. Here there is comfort. Your mother is here. I will not leave you alone again._  
  
Rasetsunyo settled to the ground in a swirling flow of robes, folding down to her knees elegantly. Kougaiji still slept in her arms, but his body lay with a more genuine ease now, unlike the earlier taut hopelessness of his posture. She looked up, and her eyes _light all light endless light_ met Yaone's, and she gestured to Yaone to kneel opposite her.  
  
Yaone knelt with the grace of long practice, setting her spear down beside her. Her right hand was still ungloved.  
  
Rasetsunyo reached out, her long sleeves trailing on the ground, and shifted Kougaiji so that his head lay in Yaone's lap. _Take care of him,_ the light and the silence said . . .  
  
. . . and she was gone.  
  
Kougaiji breathed gently, his chest rising and falling. His hair was as soft as silk against Yaone's hand.  
  
"Anh. I'm impressed. I really am." Nii Jieni's voice was soft and full of dangerous promises. "But now, Yaone-kun, you must argue your case with me."  
  
---

Fanfic Page 


	10. Illumination

Chapter Ten   
  
"What am I supposed to say to you?" For the moment, Yaone did not choose to look up from the sleeping Kougaiji. "You kept our bargain, I suppose. You gave me the tools to restore him. Perhaps he is restored." She stroked Kougaiji's hair again. "You could have come in here at any time, couldn't you? Played with him like this? Why bother to wait till you could do it in front of me?"  
  
"Anh. Not quite right. I came in by other ways. If he shuddered at your entry, think how he would have reacted to mine alone? Mm? I may never have been this deep. You let me in here. And now I can -- do it -- in front of you." Light threw his long robed shadow across the floor from behind her. It moved in long swinging folds of darkness.  
  
"Is this still a game?"  
  
"Do you want to play?"  
  
He was waiting for something. She was sure of it. She had to try to guess what. But at the back of her mind, the memory of Howan-hakase whispered in utter despair, _You can't win. The best thing you can do is not to play in the first place._  
  
"You don't own me," she said instead.  
  
"Really?" His shadow fell over her and Kougaiji. "Don't I? What is there that you haven't given up to me?"  
  
"I haven't killed anyone because you told me to." _That is for Kougaiji-sama alone._  
  
He chuckled. "What a strange virginity, Yaone-kun."  
  
_And how many times have you killed . . ._ The thought passed through her mind. She could believe anything of him. Anything at all.  
  
There was a dark smirk to his voice, as though he knew what she was thinking. "Mmm. Yes. I've been soaked in blood, Yaone-kun. My sleeves were wet with it. My face was splashed with it. It matted my hair." His fingers touched the edge of her neck, then picked up one of the tails of her hair and swung it loosely. "I could smell nothing else. There was nothing else."  
  
"And you come here dressed as a Sanzou?" She couldn't keep the incredulity out of her voice. _Even Genjou Sanzou is not like this . . ._  
  
"I carry the sutra of No God," he answered. "I own it. It is mine."  
  
"I am not yours," Yaone said between her teeth. "I made a bargain. The matter is done."  
  
"Ah, but I care about those who sell themselves." He picked up the second lock of her hair. "Like you. I want to look after you, Yaone-kun."  
  
"You want to play with me," she said, biting down horror.  
  
"That too."   
  
He took the third lock of her hair, and began to braid the locks together. It was abominable to have him do something so . . . so intimate, so private a service. It was a gesture of intent. _You're mine. You can do nothing._  
  
That sparked something else, a light in Yaone's hopelessness. Nii wanted a reaction from her. He goaded Kougaiji-sama -- he had goaded Kougaiji-sama, in the past -- in order to get a reaction then. Words came to her. "You want me to fight you? We both know how that goes, Nii-hakase. I have another answer. We both leave here and leave Kougaiji-sama to wake up on his own. You want to fight him? Then let him wake up so that you can challenge him again. He's more amusing than I am, isn't he?" It burned her to speak so casually of her prince, but she made herself do it. "Isn't that what you've wanted all along? An excuse to have a challenger again, rather than simply a toy?"  
  
His fingers tugged at her hair. "Someone's getting sharper. Someone's going to _cut_ herself."  
  
"Isn't it?" _And was I worth so little in your eyes? Just another tool, another toy? And should it matter if I was?_  
  
Nii Jieni released the braided rope of her hair, letting it settle against her back. "You think you know me, Yaone-kun? Mm?"  
  
"I think that you have taught me a little, Nii-hakase," she replied.  
  
"How polite." He seemed amused now, as though his quick humour had turned in its course again. "You think you know what I want, mm? You think you can give it to me?"  
  
She shrugged, and did not look up at his face.  
  
"Well, I know what you want, Yaone-kun." Again that way of naming her, as though she were his student. "You've got it in your lap. Got him in your lap. Why don't you do something, mm? Just a little --"  
  
"I wouldn't!" she broke in.  
  
He continued over her interjection. "-- touch, just a _tiny_ little change. Give him the courage to fight Gyokumen, perhaps? Make him strong enough to protect his sister. To protect you. To do something. Don't you want him to do something, mm?" The words might have been innocent. They weren't. They whispered around Yaone like shadows. "Don't you want him to . . ."  
  
_This is what I want_, Yaone thought, and bent forward to kiss Kougaiji on the lips. One hand cradled his head, the other brushed against his bare chest, moving over the warm naked skin. _This is what I want, just once, while he sleeps, to know that I did it, that I said it with my lips against his own, because I will never be able to say it while he is awake and to his face._   
  
Her free hand moved down to one of her pouches, hidden by her body as she bent over Kougaiji. She flipped out a single capsule, and brought it to her mouth as she released her prince, opening her lips to take it in. _And after this neither of us will touch him again. Not here. Not like this._  
  
She settled Kougaiji's head on the ground _and if I never again touch his hair like that_ and rose from where she knelt _and if I never again see him like that_ and turned to face Nii Jieni.  
  
He smelt of blood and cigarettes. It made no sense for him to wear a Sanzou's robes. _I carry the sutra of No God_, he had said. A sutra hung around his shoulders. She had seen Genjou Sanzou's sutra. They looked the same. He watched her from behind the panes of his glasses, still smiling that knowing smile.  
  
_This is blasphemy._ She reached out to put her arms around his neck, and he suffered it. She drew his head down, and leaned up to kiss him, and as their mouths opened together and she felt his body against hers, she bit down on the capsule, and the poison went into both of them at the same time.  
  
_Our bargain is over. This is what I began and now I end it. We both leave Kougaiji-sama alone. Kougaiji-sama's choice. Not mine. Not yours._  
  
It was swift. Darkness came over her like a storm and carried her away.  
  
---  
  
In the quiet of the early morning, Yaone lay on her bed, and remembered inch by inch the comfort of a soft mattress and warm covers, the peace of relaxation, the slow unfolding of something knotted inside her which could finally give way and let her rest. In her sleep, she dreamed that she heard Nii Jieni's voice, falling like dust through rays of sunlight, drifting into her sleep and passing and then gone.  
  
". . . boundaries, Yaone-kun. You think you know me. You think you could say what I will do and what I will not do. Such a small concept, mm? I will do what I will do. If I choose, I will be cruel. But if I choose, I can let you go for the moment. Like this. Like being a god, Yaone-kun; no restraints, no boundaries. No limits. Be cruel. Be kind. Take. Release. To do exactly what you want, fettered by nothing -- what would you call that, Yaone-kun? Knowing everyone around you is just dolls, and playing with them . . ."  
  
And then gone.  
  
---  
  
Yaone rose through sleep like a fish gliding to the surface of the water. Her room was full of light, the blind drawn back to let the morning sun wash through and fill the room with colour. She drew back her futon; she was still fully dressed, one hand gloved, the other ungloved, her hair twisted into a loose rope that clung against her fingers when she tried to pull it apart.  
  
Her other glove lay on the table in front of her bedroom mirror, its fingers uncurled towards the glass.  
  
Yaone pulled off her clothes with a strange anger, and flung them into a corner, desperate to clean herself. A clean robe was soft against her skin, but the simple action of touch held other memories which she could not force away. When she looked in the mirror, there was something strange to her eyes which she could not recognise.  
  
Someone knocked at her door.  
  
"Come in," she called.  
  
A servant entered, and bowed politely. "Yaone-san. Kougaiji-sama requests that you attend his chambers after breakfast. He has some matters to discuss with you and Dokugakuji-san." He paused. "He commands me to say that he is grateful to you for looking into his sister's whereabouts, and that will be one of those matters."  
  
_Please._ Please, let this not be a dream, let it be real, and let me be hearing this, and let me believe that it is true. "Thank you for the message. Have you informed Dokugakuji-san also?"  
  
The servant's eyes were as unreadable as any servant's should be in answer to that question, his face a blank. "Dokugakuji-san was with Kougaiji-sama, Yaone-san."   
  
And that, as nothing else would, made Yaone finally know that it was true, in her heart and in her mind. "Thank you," she said, the words coming to her tongue unbidden, and she watched the servant leave, and remembered how it had felt to kiss Kougaiji-sama's lips.  
  
_And so we both got what we wanted. Thank you, Nii-hakase. And if I wanted other things as well? I am not prepared to sell myself to get them. I will not give up the Kougaiji-sama whom I love in order to get someone with his face for my own, for my very own, for ever and ever._  
  
Outside the fortress there was sunlight. Inside the fortress there was fire.  
  
_You might be a god of sorts, Nii-hakase, with your detachment and your ability to choose to do or not to do, to take or to turn away, and to simply watch and not care. I am a thousand miles from that, and even further from any spiritual enlightenment._  
  
Her tears were hot against her cheeks as the thoughts worked their way through her mind.  
  
_But you asked me if I knew what I wanted, and I do, and now I have it. The knowledge that I will never have something else is a piece of wisdom I did not want. Desire hurts. I cannot be you._  
  
_But I don't want to be you. Because you would never have been in Kougaiji-sama's service, and you will never be his friend, and he will never be yours. Because it doesn't matter if he doesn't love me but I love him. I love him, and I was able to give him this, give him to himself._  
  
Time to start again. Time to wash herself, and dress, and eat breakfast, and attend on Kougaiji-sama, and go through another day, whether it was dream or reality, and be the person she had chosen to be, Kougaiji-sama's servant and guard and apothecary -- and friend. _I will see Kougaiji-sama smile at me._  
  
_I will see the light in his eyes, and I will be happy._  
  
---

Fanfic Page 


End file.
